The urns of the silent snow,

The earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder

The bars of the springs below.
The beard and the hair
Of the River-god were

Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet Nymph's flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

66

Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!

And bid the deep hide me,

For he grasps me now by the hair!"

The loud Ocean heard

To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water

The Earth's white daughter

Fled like a sunny beam;

Behind her descended

Her billows, unblended

With the brackish Dorian stream.

Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main,
Alpheus rushed behind,-
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin,

Down the stream of the cloudy wind.

Under the bowers,

Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearlèd thrones ;
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods;
Over heaps of unvalued stones;
Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams

Weave a network of coloured light;

And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves

Are as green as the forest's night :—
Outspeeding the shark,

And the sword-fish dark,
Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts

Of the mountain clifts,They past to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains

In Enna's mountains,

Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted

Groan single-hearted,

They ply their watery tasks.

At sunrise they leap

From their cradles steep

In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noon-tide they flow

Through the woods below,

And the meadows of Asphodel;
And at night they sleep

In the rocking deep

Beneath the Ortygian shore,

Like spirits that lie

In the azure sky,

When they love but live no more.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

THE rivulet,

[From Alastor.]

Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine

Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell

Among the moss with hollow harmony,

Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones
It danced; like childhood, laughing as it went :
Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud
That overhung its quietness.-"O stream!
Whose source is inaccessibly profound,
Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?
Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,
Thy dazzling waves, thy low and hollow gulphs,
Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course
Have each their type in me: and the wide sky
And measureless ocean may declare as soon
What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud
Contains thy waters, as the universe

Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste

I' the passing wind!"

SHELLEY.

[From Evening, Ponte-a-Mare, Pisa.]

AND

ND evening's breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream, Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.

SHELLEY.

The River Clwyd in North Wales.

CAMBRIAN river! with slow music gliding

By pastoral hills, old woods, and ruin'd towers;
Now midst thy reeds and golden willows hiding,
Now gleaming forth by some rich bank of flowers;
Long flow'd the current of my life's clear hours
Onward with them, whose voice yet haunts my dream,
Tho' time and change, and other mightier powers,
Far from thy side have borne me. Thou, smooth stream
Art winding still thy sunny meads along,
Murmuring to cottage and gray hall thy song,

Low, sweet, unchanged. My being's tide hath pass'd
Through rocks and storms; yet will I not complain,
If, thus wrought free and pure from earthly stain,
Brightly its waves may reach their parent deep at last.
FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS.

To the Nile.

SON of the old moon-mountains African!

Stream of the Pyramid and Crocodile ! We call thee fruitful, and that very while A desert fills our seeing's inward span: Nurse of swart nations since the world began, Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile Those men to honour thee, who, worn with toil, Rest them a space 'twixt Cairo and Deccan ? O may dark fancies err! They surely do; 'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

The pleasant sun-rise. Green isles hast thou too, And to the sea as happily dost haste.

JOHN KEATS.

IN

[From Stanzas.]

N a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,

Thy bubblings ne'er remember

Apollo's summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,

They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

KEATS.